Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 2nd May 2008 20:52 UTC, submitted by irbis
One of the biggest problems facing the European Union today is the fact that within its borders, 23 languages are spoken. This means that all the important documents have to be translated by a whole army of translators, which costs the taxpayer more than 1 billion Euros a year - and companies trading within the EU spend millions more. The EU-funded TC-STAR project aims to tackle this issue with technology: a system that eats speech in one language, and outputs that same speech in another.
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Member since:
2006-06-02
Well, linguistic reformers get, well, reformed by others who think that their constructed language is better - hence not only is there Esperanto but Ido, and furthermore Interlingua and Atlango (the latter being one that I quite like the look of, although Esperanto admittedly might be, overall, the best bet for both Intra-European and International commmunication). There's a host of 'universal languages' at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_language)
I would say that the TC-STAR project and 'universal' languages miss the point. It's sort of like saying that we should all communicate better using mathematical symbols or other abstract signs (such as BlissSymbolics), since these are at a higher level of thought, happily unconstrained by the cultural baggage that apparently causes such misunderstanding.
The problem with this in my view is that the relationship with the abstracted or universal languages is purely instrumental and detached.To learn Italian or German or French or Chinese or even for me, a Brit, Canadian or American English, is to learn and understand the very culture of living breathing people. There will not be an effective universal language the learning of which will bring natural understanding of others until we have an enforced global mono-culture and a system of enforced global ethics. Does that sound good to anyone?
If we spent as much time and investment in secondary and tertiary education on several already existent languages as we do on intellectual ephemera such as Media Studies or Post-Modernism, we would achieve a lot more real understanding of others than any language reform might achieve, 'neat' though the prospect sounds.
(Edited for typos)
Edited 2008-05-03 10:15 UTC